Akelah and the Bee

I was pretty skeptical about this movie. The cast sounded good. But I didn't expect to like it. I like relatively few kids' movies. I guess my standards for them are pretty high.

Akelah and the Bee is about an 11-year-old girl in South Central LA who is pushed to enter the school spelling bee. She wins, and it's obvious she can spell practically anything. So her principal and his friend, a Stanford English professor on sabbatical, groom her for the national spelling bee. Her overwhelmed, widowed mother [Angela Bassett] is furious; she thinks this is a waste of time for Akelah [Kiki Palmer]. It's a good movie that sounds all the right notes about believing in yourself and working hard for a goal. I did find the mother's protests a bit hard to believe.

But all in all, I have only one complaint. The script makes incredible efforts to make the characters sound like they really live in the urban inner city. To the point where the preteens curse left and right, everyone speaks in a thick urban accent, and uses lots of slang.

Hey, I get it. I cursed a lot in 7th grade myself. The people in this movie are poor. Most of them aren't Caucasian. They live in South Central. But like many people do when trying to portray the South on film, you all went overboard on playing to the stereotype. I think this effect is perhaps so pronounced because part of the script involves Akelah's professor/tutor [Laurence Fishburne] coaching her on grammar, too. But really.

Worth watching? Sure, especially if you have preteen kids. But if you're squeamish on language, I'd steer clear.